What should have been...

I was thinking today about Bryston's nursery that never got finished. In fact I had just gotten his crib bedding in the mail a few days before we found out and all I had managed to do prior to this was clean out & empty our spare bedroom. I've never shared about what it would have been, could have been and now is....

My husband is a volunteer firefighter. He loves it and I had promised before we found out the baby's sex that if it was a boy we could do a fireman themed nursery. He was so excited about the idea, me not as much, but I did find an adorable set online that I knew would make us both happy. It was the Frankie Firetruck set that I settled on. Here's the stock photo of everything that I bought.

The walls in our spare bedroom were already this color and had played around with the idea of painting a powdered blue halfway up and dividing the tan & blue with a white chair rail. I thought that would be cute, but we never got around to it. I pictured a cozy cream colored glider recliner chair in the corner by the window and a lamp side table by that that I could sit and rock him to sleep in and gaze out the window. I imagined a pretty cream and blue area rug covering our wood floors to protect him if he fell while learning to walk. I pictured tasteful black & white prints on the wall of his ultrasounds and foot/hand prints and baby pictures. I thought we would have shelves of mementos of piggy banks or hand impressions. I imagined that we would use a bassinet the 1st few weeks he was home before we would ease him into his own room. I worried that the room had too much light or that it'd be too cold for his precious little body. But none of that mattered. None of those worries or fantasies ever came true. I was a day late and a dollar short as is the story of my life with pregnancies. I sent the crib set back a few weeks after he passed. I didnt think that I could bear to look at it anymore. It was so sadly hopeful that it was painful to look at it anymore. I wish I'd kept it though in retrospect. Even though he never used it, it was still his.

Now the room has amassed an innumerable amount of junk. It is now our store room for useless things that I have no room or use for anymore. It went from being an empty room full of potential to being a cluttered hopeless mess. I wonder what psychologists might say about that? How I let this treasured room of his fall by the wayside. I don't like going in there. Not only because it's hard emotionally but I feel so overwhelmed by the mess. LOL, this is sounding a bit horderish, but I must say that this is the only room in the house like this, if you don't count our basement that we have been redoing forever so it's a mess at the moment too but you get the idea. I don't know what else to say about this, just that I wish with all my heart that it could have been the nursery that I had envisioned & dreamed about back then. Some nights I dream about hearing him cry and walking down the hall to his room but when I open the door its just as it is now. When I wake up I feel so hopeless after those dreams...

But I know that I'm blessed, even though it's turned out this way. After all, I had an amazing 28 weeks with him. I smiled the other night while remembering him snuggling into his daddy's hand on my belly. Bryston had a favorite position to snuggle into, he was always nudging his little head or behind into the lower left side of my tummy which happened to be where Ty's hand was at the time. We laughed when Ty took his hand away Bryston pushed himself so hard against that spot, a bit uncomfortable for me, almost as if to search for his daddy's hand. When Ty put his hand back Bryston stopped, confirming our thoughts. This is one of my favorite memories. And it's a good sign, I think that I can think back on this and smile instead of it making me sad. So yes, I am pushing forward and making progress, all be it slowly but I'm inching my way forward.

It's getting late so I'll stop here. I hope all of you are having a great & blessed weekend! (((HUGS)))